How Stupid Are Anti-Semites?

(From Wikipedia)

On December 10, 1868, the first traffic lights were installed outside the British Houses of Parliament in London, by the railway engineer J. P. Knight. They resembled railway signals of the time, with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for night use. The gas lantern was turned with a lever at its base so that the appropriate light faced traffic. Unfortunately, it exploded on 2 January 1869, injuring or killing the policeman who was operating it.

The modern electric traffic light is an American invention. As early as 1912 in Salt Lake City, Utah, policeman Lester Wire invented the first red-green electric traffic lights. On 5 August 1914, the American Traffic Signal Company installed a traffic signal system on the corner of East 105th Street and Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Ohio.  It had two colours, red and green, and a buzzer, based on the design of James Hoge, to provide a warning for colour changes. The design by James Hoge allowed police and fire stations to control the signals in case of emergency. The first four-way, three-color traffic light was created by police officer William Potts in Detroit, Michigan in 1920. In 1922, T.E. Hayes patented his "Combination traffic guide and traffic regulating signal" (Patent # 1447659). Ashville, Ohio claims to be the location of the oldest working traffic light in the United States, used at an intersection of public roads until 1982 when it was moved to a local museum.

The first interconnected traffic signal system was installed in Salt Lake City in 1917, with six connected intersections controlled simultaneously from a manual switch. Automatic control of interconnected traffic lights was introduced March 1922 in Houston, Texas. The first automatic experimental traffic lights in England were deployed in Wolverhampton in 1927.

The color of the traffic lights representing stop and go might be derived from those used to identify port (red) and starboard (green) in maritime rules governing right of way, where the vessel on the left must stop for the one crossing on the right.

Timers on traffic lights originated in Taipei, Taiwan, and brought to the US after an engineer discovered its use. Though uncommon in most American urban areas, timers are still used in some other Western Hemisphere countries. Timers are useful for drivers/pedestrians to plan if there is enough time to attempt to cross the intersection before the light turns red and conversely, the amount of time before the light turns green.

This is all fascinating you are thinking, but what does it mean?  If this report found in the Economist is true, every city, town or village will want it!

The widely-respected British Economist has come up with a new anti-Israel libel: Jerusalem traffic lights are timed to discriminate against Arabs. The pro-Hamas Al Jazeera Arab satellite network picked up the story and showed its readers one of the intersections in question.

The CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) media watchdog group researched the claim and found it a total fabrication.

At CAMERA’s request, The Economist provided it with a list of the intersections where Arabs allegedly have to wait a longer time than Jews. CAMERA said that its investigation “reveals that The Economist and Al Jazeera claims are absurdly false “and that the discrepancy between the timing is related to street size and traffic flow, as in every other city in the world.

The Economist claimed that cars approaching an intersection from two Arab neighborhoods in northern Jerusalem have only 18 seconds to proceed on a green light while motorists from the nearby Jewish areas of Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Yaakov have a 90-second light.

However, CAMERA points out that the road from the Jewish neighborhoods is part of the major artery known as Highway 1, where traffic is much heavier than the road from the Arab neighborhoods of Shuafat and Beit Hanina.

In fact, at another nearby intersection of Highway 1, Jewish residents from Ramot Eshkol and Givat HaMivtar have only 16 seconds to proceed on a green light while having to wait one minute and 41 seconds, the time allotted for cars to pass the intersection on the main highway.

If the “discrimination” label is applied equally, the traffic lights also are “biased” against Jews at the Highway 1 intersection with the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, where the Obama administration has demanded that Israel stop building for Jews. Motorists from the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood have a much shorter green light than those at the Arab populated Shuafat intersection.

“Clearly, then, the discrepancy between red and green light times at the intersection is a function of road size and not ethnicity,” CAMERA concluded.

“Motorists from the Arab neighborhoods are certainly able to use any of the larger roads crossing Route 1. For example, it is a mere half-kilometer detour for Beit Hanina residents to opt to skip the allegedly racist traffic light by using the overpass highway crossing Route 1,” the watchdog group added.

Another allegedly “discriminatory “ intersection involved the Wadi Joz junction with the major highway that serves Maaleh Adumim, with three times the population of Wadi Joz and a much longer green light.

However, the “discrimination” there also works in reverse. Traffic from Wadi Joz to the intersection of the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus has a green light for two minutes and 12 seconds, while mostly Jewish drivers from the other road have only eight seconds.

The same article also charges that Jerusalem is building a light railway (pictured above) for “settlers” and "robbing” Arabs of two lanes of traffic. The same light railway has taken away lanes from all motorists, Jewish and otherwise, throughout the city. Shopowners in Jerusalem's center have been affected the most, with many shutdowns as a result. Furthermore, the light railway will be available to Arabs as well as Jews.

The Economist has not replied to CAMERA’s documentation.

And you thought your traffic lights were screwed up!

I really shouldn't be angered by this, after all Al Jazeera is an Arab news source, and The Economist is a British news source.  Both by those very definitions explains it all. BLOOD LIBEL by the 2 of the leading groups of anti-Semites in the world.